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by UbiquitousOranges
Summary: The war is over. Now we have to build lives worth living.  Irvine x Zell
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: All characters and settings belong to Square Enix. If I'd written that game, there'd have been way more gay sex.

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><p>So there we were, Zell and me, driving a car from the Garden motor pool down to the beach. Selphie, Quistis, and Squall had all flaked on us; they were all busy with classes and paperwork, I guess. Still blows my mind that Selphie's teaching now - Advanced Junctioning. Guess she's taking a page out of Quistis's book. Anyway. The car's one of those open-sided military-issue all-wheel-drive numbers, and we're driving along the coast road, so there's a nice little breeze coming in. We had a cooler full of beer in the back - I had finally turned 18 a few months before, so we were legal. Blue skies, eighty-eight on the thermometer. Life was looking pretty good.<p>

I let Zell drive; he enjoys it more than I do, and that way I got radio privileges. (Balamb's got a decent country station.) The view wasn't bad either... and I'm not talking about the landscape. The non-tattooed side of Zell's face was toward me, and I couldn't help but look. He looks sort of vulnerable when you can't see the tattoos; reminds me that we're still kids, I guess, and that other guys my age are still in school, with nothing more to worry about than when the next term paper's due. There's nothing like fighting a war to make a guy feel old and jaded.

Anyway, he noticed me looking at him once or twice, so after that I stared out at the sea. It was just grassy dunes and white sand between us and the water. I was just starting to wonder if we'd packed enough ice in with the beers by the time we got to the beach.

We were far enough out from town and the Garden that it was still pretty quiet; a couple of families out with their kids, some ocean kayakers coming back in from an early-morning trip. It was still a few hours before noon. We staked out a prime spot, set down the cooler, spread out some towels. Zell shucked his shirt and ran for the ocean. I took off my hat and shirt and started slathering myself in sunscreen. (Gotta protect my delicate complexion, you know.) Then I sat down and pretended to read the latest Weapons Monthly while Zell splashed around in the surf with somebody's dog. He (Zell, not the dog) looked absolutely fucking gorgeous, all tanned skin and muscle, blond hair wet and slicked back, swim trunks hanging low on his hips. If I hadn't already known I was bi, that sight alone would have made me seriously question my sexuality.

The dog's owner called to it, and Zell smiled and waved. She was a little brunette with pigtails; I had seen her around the Garden once or twice. She waved back at Zell and walked over to him, and the two started talking. I felt a totally unreasonable twinge of jealousy, and tried to distract myself by actually reading my magazine. That didn't help, so I reached into the cooler and pulled out a beer just as the two of them (plus the soggy black dog) started walking back up the beach toward me. I took a deep breath and a big gulp from the can, and plastered a smile on my face.

"You gonna introduce me?" I asked, doing my best imitation of... myself, I guess. The girl was pretty enough, but for some reason that made me feel even worse. Since when has looking at a cute girl actually _lowered _my spirits?

"Irvine, this is Gina. She works in the library at the Garden. Gina, this is Irvine, who holds the keys to all things cold and alcoholic." Zell grinned. I sighed and handed him two beers. He handed one to Gina, who handed it back to me.

"Actually, I can't stay long," she said. She had a soft voice, like what you'd expect of a girl who works at a library. "My shift starts in an hour, and I have to get the dog back to my parents' place. Thanks, though. It was nice to meet you, Irvine. Oh, Zell - that book you wanted got returned the other day. Come pick it up on Monday? I'll be there all afternoon."

"Sure thing," Zell said. We waved, and she walked away. Zell sighed, plopped down on his towel, and opened his beer.

"She seemed nice," I said, in the most neutral voice I could manage.

Zell stared at me like I had suddenly turned into a Pupu.

"'Nice?'" he said, incredulously. "I was expecting 'I'd bend that over a table' or 'Does she have a sister?'" He took a drink. "When did you turn into an old lady?"

"Hey, now. No need to get your panties in a twist," I said. "Seemed like you two had a thing going there. I'm not gonna get in the middle of that. I have _principles_, you know."

Zell laughed. "Since when?"

I chose not to dignify that with a response and finished my beer instead. As I was getting another, Zell asked, "So how are things going with you and Selphie?"

I pulled a little too hard opening the can, and the pull-tab snapped off. "They're not."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"That means she called me a 'spineless bitch' and threw me out of her office. I really don't want to talk about it."

"Fair enough."

We sat for a while, just drinking. The beach had started to fill up by then, and the sun was getting pretty hot. Finally I stood up, a little unsteadily (what can I say? I'm a lightweight), with the intention of going for a swim. Zell stood up at the same time.

"Did you see that?" he asked sharply, looking toward the ocean.

I was about to say that I didn't see anything when an orange fin broke the sand. I reached for my gun, and cursed when I realized it wasn't there.

There would be more; Fastitocalons hunt in packs.

Zell was already running towards the monsters - by then, three orange fins were visible, and two more appeared as I sprinted down the beach. I wasn't armed, but I still had my junctions; at the least, I could heal Zell if he got hurt.

Another fin appeared under Zell's feet, and he went down.

I felt the magic gathering in my hands, and the moment Zell rolled clear of the creature, I let the spell go, arcing to hit the fin in a brilliant blue-white flash. The monster shrieked and erupted from the sand, rushing towards me with its jaws open. At that moment, Zell seemed to materialize next to me, delivering a solid punch to the monster's head. It fell to the ground, writhing, and we turned on the rest of the pack.

I shot off Thunder spells as fast as I could, getting the monsters angry enough to come above-ground, where Zell could finish them off. He moved efficiently, fluidly, dodging attacks and countering with brutal strikes whenever he saw an opening.

After a few minutes of fighting, there were no monsters left.

The few civilians left on the beach stared. I counted nine dead monsters.

I took hold of Zell's shoulder. He stood in the middle of the carnage, breathing heavily, eyes wide.

"We're leaving," I said in a low voice. "Come on."

He followed me without a fight. I scooped up our stuff, barely slowing down, and headed for the car.

He didn't say anything until we were in the car, headed back to Garden, this time with me driving.

"Do you ever... do you ever feel like you're back... in the war?"

I glanced over at him. The stark black tattoo was facing me, and he was staring out the window, into the green hills.

"Shit, yeah," I said. "Wakes me up at night, sometimes. I started leaving my gun in the closet, so I'd stop sleepwalking with it."

His eyes turned toward me. "Really?"

"Yeah."

We drove along for a while.

"Radio?" he asked.

"Sure."

All the stations were playing news or commercials, so he turned it back off.

"You know," he said, "there were lots of times we all could have died. During the war. But I didn't think about it much then. There was always one more thing to do, one more fight to win, one more base to sneak into."

I grinned. "That one was fun."

He smiled, but it faded quickly. "But now... I mean, we're pretty damn safe. No one's actively trying to kill us. There's plenty of monsters still around from the Lunar Cry, I guess, but most of them are in Esthar, and Garden sends out patrols to keep them away from towns anyway. But... what I mean is... We could still die. It's less likely now, I guess, but there could be a fucking tsunami right now and we'd be gone, just like that. It... I guess it bothers me more now than it did then." He took a deep breath. He was looking out the window again.

"Maybe now you've got something you don't want to lose," I said, keeping my eyes fixed firmly on the road.

"I dunno about that," he said. "More like, it would leave too much of a cliffhanger. There's still stuff I want to finish."

I didn't know what to say to that. We stayed quiet, each thinking our own thoughts, until we got back to the Garden. I turned in the car and keys at the garage, and we headed inside the gates.

In the front courtyard (I always thought of it as "the Garden garden"), Zell stopped and turned to me.

"I'm glad to have you watching my back," he said, and stuck out his hand.

I took it. He had a strong grip. "And it's good to know you're watching mine." I smiled. "Anyway, us world-saving types have to look out for each other. Right?"

He smiled too. "Right," he said, and walked off in the direction of the lobby.

I stood there for a while, remembering the warmth of his hand.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: The game belongs to Squeenix. If it was mine, Quistis and Xu would have totally made out.

AN: Okay, I swear this is going somewhere. Bear with me for another chapter or two.

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><p>I woke up from the best dream I'd had in weeks, a vague memory of warm, smooth skin and soft hair lingering behind my eyeballs. I sat on the edge of my bed and rubbed my eyes until my worst thoughts subsided a bit. The alarm clock read 0315, making it officially Tuesday morning.<p>

Once I'd sat up, there was no going back to sleep, so I looked around my room for something to keep me busy until a more humane hour of the day. I finally settled on cleaning my gun (in a purely literal sense). I took it out of the closet, along with all the requisite supplies, and took it down to nuts and bolts. I had gone through this ritual hundreds of times before; the weapon I was tinkering with was a significant improvement over the old Valiant shotgun I'd gotten, general-issue, from Galbadia Garden. (Rifles may have been my first love, but there's nothing like a good shotgun to instill fear in the hearts of your enemies at close range.) This gun was recognizable (under my custom modifications) as an Exeter-model pump-action. I'd shortened the barrels as much as I could without reducing the mag size, but left the recoil-damping mechanism as it was - some things just can't be improved on. I considered the benefits of converting it to semi-auto; it would involve replacing quite a few components, and I'd have to add a few workarounds to deal with the modifications already in place. I resolved to talk it over with Loire, if I could ever catch him when he had a free moment. You'd never guess it from that goofy demeanor, but the man has a damned scientific attitude about his weapons.

Just when I'd managed to cover the entire bed and about half the desk with little bits of gun, there came a knock on the door. I disentangled myself from the machinery, trying not to disturb the carefully-sorted piles, pulled on a pair of pants over my boxers, and went to answer it.

Zell stood in the hallway, dark circles under his eyes, looking sheepish.

"Hello, Zell."

"Hi, Irvine."

He shuffled his feet.

I sighed. "Fine. Come on in."

The desk chair was still clear, so Zell sat there while I resumed my position on the bed. I started oiling things and putting them back together. "Care to tell me why I have the pleasure of your company at" (I glanced at the clock) "oh-four-twenty-five?"

He cleared his throat. He fidgeted. He turned the chair back and forth through a fifteen-degree arc.

"You know about... _girls_, right?"

I stopped my work and reached for a hair-tie as I pondered the best way to answer that question. I had a sudden sinking feeling somewhere in the vicinity of my ribcage.

"I guess I thought I did, once," I said, "though recent events seem to indicate otherwise."

He would not be dissuaded. "So... you remember Gina? From the beach."

I sighed. "Yes. I remember Gina."

"I think she might, like, have a _thing_ for me."

"You don't say."

"Well, what do I _do_?"

"That depends," I said carefully, sighting down one barrel. "Do you like her?"

He ran a hand through his perpetually-disheveled hair. "That's the problem, I guess. I don't know."

I rejoiced a little, inwardly. "Well, then you've got options." I began the fourteen-screw process of reattaching the barrel assembly to the stock. "One: get to know her better, see if it turns into something. Find out what you've got in common, all like that. Then, whether or not you end up going out with her, you've made a friend.

"Two: do nothing. If you really don't feel anything for her, then it's better not to lead her on. You go your way, she goes hers. No hurt feelings.

"Three." (Here I put on my most salacious grin.) "Take her back to your room and bang her like a drum."

Zell turned bright pink and sputtered. "She's not... not that kind of girl!"

"Oh, but you're that kind of guy?"

The pink deepened to red, and he buried his face in his hands.

I chuckled a little. "Sorry. You're just too easy to tease. Unfortunately for you, I am unscrupulous, and you're cute when you blush."

He picked his head up long enough to glare at me, then hid in his elbows again.

I let him be while I finished reassembling the Exeter.

Eventually he recovered. We sat quietly for a little while as I polished up the moonstones on the stock.

"I just don't know," he said into the silence. "What would you do?"

"Personally," I said, blowing an infinitesimal piece of lint off the Exeter's barrel, "I'd go knock some T-Rexaurs on the head."

So we did.

The Training Center is the only thing in the Garden that's open all night, and there's usually a few insomniacs in there, trying to tire themselves out enough to get back to sleep. That night it was empty, though I suspected that the couples in the "secret area" were just keeping it down for once.

We stalked a few groups of grats, flanking them and taking them down before they realized what had hit them. There wasn't any challenge to it; Zell's nervous energy seemed to increase, rather than decrease. Finally, we hit on the trail of a massive T-Rex, following it through the undergrowth until we were close enough to see it through the trees. I wondered how they'd gotten it inside; it was thirty feet tall if it was in inch, and looked mean as hell. I nodded to Zell, and crept around to the left to try for an ambush.

And damned if there wasn't another one, bigger than the first.

Now, in many situations, discretion is the better part of valor. Most times, I'd choose not to stick around for a fight with a ruby dragon on the Island Closest to Hell. But this was different. They let raw cadets come in here, for Hyne's sake, and these things could roll right over those poor kids. Zell and I were uniquely qualified to take these guys out.

So Zell blasted the first dinosaur with ice magic, which was my cue. He must not have seen the other one, 'cause it got him with its tail when he jumped out to attack the littler one. I swore and emptied both barrels into the big one's face.

This just pissed it off, so it came towards me, catching Zell's shoulder with its claw as it stepped over him. I saw blood on his shirt before I was distracted by my own problems.

It swiped its tail at me first, which I managed to avoid by using the time-honored tactic of falling over. I tagged it again, turning its left eye into a gory mess, but the thing wouldn't stop coming. I heard lumbering footsteps off to my right, so I rolled back into the trees, hoping they'd have to come at me single file. I fired, once, twice, three times, before I had to reload. I decided that the situation warranted the use of some non-regulation armor-piercing rounds.

My next shot went through the big one's brain.

The littler one knocked the big one's body out of the way and came for me, a growl resonating somewhere in its chest. I emptied my mag shooting at the damn thing, but a badly-timed case of the shakes sent my last two shots wide, tearing up the muscles in its side but not doing any real damage. I could feel the GFs in my head, clamoring to be let out, to be allowed to protect me. Siren, who had been Zell's before she was mine, was particularly insistent. But I knew whose help I needed.

"Leviathan," I called, and he came.

Summoning a GF is one of the best highs you'll ever get. You merge with it, _become_ it in some weird way. When I summon Leviathan, I feel the bunch and coil of his muscles as if they're my own, see the too-dry world through his eyes as a garish cacophony of he calls the tsunami, I feel the pull of the tides in my own chest.

And then it's all over, and I collapse, exhausted.

As soon as I could stand without falling, I went to Zell. His left shoulder was a mess, but it didn't look like his lung was in any danger, and he was sitting up and breathing, so I figured he wasn't dead. I had a Cure spell half-formed by the time I reached him. I laid my fingertips around the wound and let the magic flow into his body, slowly, first easing the pain, then re-knitting torn muscle and skin. When I wiped away the blood, he was whole again. He kept his eyes closed for the space of a few deep breaths, then opened them and looked at me with unabashed gratitude. My cold, black heart could have melted.

"Thanks," he said.

"Anytime," I said, and I meant it.


End file.
